My Alternative to Prisons

Instead of paying for the crime with time, we shorten the time, in exchange for dozens more community service and fines. Stole a $60 purse? $6000 fine, and 60 hours of community service! And it would grow like so. Killing would be turned into the victims age multiplied by five in hours of community service and their age multiplied by 1000 in fines. So if a 17 year old gets killed, the killer serves 85 hours of community service and must pay a $85,000 fine. Boosts the economy and keeps the prisons from overflowing!

The problem with this proposal is that felons who've say been convicted of murder could keep on murdering while under this community service system. The point of the prison system is to lock up those who damage the structure of society by committing crimes.

This would also be less efficient than the prison system because you would have to have monitors to make sure the community service is being carried out. You could argue that it would create new jobs and boost the economy, but there would be a deficit with the jobs being lost to the collapse of the prison system (if this community/fine system was fully embraced) versus the jobs created.